Chapter XIII: The Gilded Temptation

A suit of rooms formed a gorgeous vista of subdued carpet, frescoed walls, ceilings from which the glowing flowers seemed ready to drop in masses, and tall windows muffled with draperies, upon which floods of light that fell from brackets and chandeliers turned wine-colored, and seemed to eddy and flow and ripple downward through the silken folds. Upon the walls great mirrors gleamed, like lakes margined with gold and buried in foliage, some in shadow giving out cool reflections, others throwing back light like a crystal pool in the sunshine.

Those panels which were not occupied by mirrors glowed with pictures, through which Bacchus reeled under his coronal of grape leaves; and Venus appeared, over and over again, smiling at his feet, or, with her white hands, crushing the purple clusters into his reeking wine-cup. Such gods and goddesses as Rubens loved to humanize into coarse beauty, laughed and reeled through these pictures; and though women never entered those apartments day or night, you could not turn without meeting some bewitching glance, or beckoning attitude, which disturbed you with an idea of their actual presence. Indeed this luxurious mockery of life fell upon you like enchantment. It was like living over the most splendid scenes of a classic romance; but to the true man there was something repulsive in it all—a feeling that the moral atmosphere was unwholesome, as if sighs and unheard curses floated still among the rich draperies and sensuous pictures.

That keen intuition, which is the essence of our natural senses, till they become demoralized and coarse like an over-ripe flower, was sufficient to warn any good man that evil associations lurked everywhere around him. But few good men ever entered that building. The clink of gold, the rustle of bank notes, and the low hum of conversation which filled these rooms through the night hours, had little in them calculated to draw the honorable and true into that haunt.

The rooms were full of company, for play ran high that night. There was little noise and no appearance of confusion: the excitement was too intense for that. But the hush of restrained passions is sometimes more striking than their outbreak. An abrupt exclamation now and then, the hiss of a breath suddenly drawn in, and the sharp glitter of an eye fiercely uplifted from the cards, alone gave evidence of the contest in reality raging through these rooms.

In the most distant apartment from the entrance a table was laid, glittering with silver engraved with the delicacy of ice jewelry, and glass that seemed cut from the ice itself.

Forced fruits gleamed richly through this frost-work of silver; and the glass, amber-hued and ruby-tinted by rare wines that filled it, mingled in one luxurious picture. But the whole was tamed down by the chandelier above, whose shades absorbed the light like great pearls and gave it forth in moonbeams.

It was beyond the usual hour of supper, but those around the card-table were so intensely occupied, that they forgot the hour, and even persons who were evidently but lookers-on became so interested in the play that a furtive glance was all they could bestow on the dimly lighted table beyond.

Down one side of these rooms ran what appeared to be rows of windows, all closely curtained with crimson damask which swept the carpet. But these draperies concealed the entrance to a series of lateral apartments, where the more respectable frequenters of the house made up select parties, and trod for themselves a more aristocratic road-to-ruin than those who appeared openly in the outer room.

Among the group that surrounded the faro-table was a young man who had been quietly but desperately betting for the last hour. He was a tall, handsome fellow, whose presence struck you, at first sight, with a resistless idea not only of great personal beauty but of corresponding intellect. Dark-brown hair, with a wave running through it; large, gray eyes, black under excitement; and a fresh, pure complexion, were by no means the first things that struck you in his appearance, for these are common advantages that we often meet without notice; but his figure, tall and lithe, the repose almost sullen of his manner, conspired to excite nearly as much distrust as admiration. The expression of his face, and the self-sufficient repose of his bearing, were points that riveted the attention which his fine person invited.

He had lost heavily, ruinously perhaps, but the wild anguish which might have been looked for in a face so youthful failed to excite sympathy; a dead, sullen cloud settled on his face, and, with his eyes bent to the floor, he turned from the table, moving slowly down the room.

All at once a stinging sense of his position seemed to seize upon him; for, putting one hand into his bosom where some weapon was evidently concealed, he turned abruptly aside, lifted one of the crimson curtains, and stood panting in the recess separated from the large gambling-hall by the silken drapery and a smaller room, by a door through which faint sounds reached his ear, though at the moment they did not arrest his attention. After a moment the young man conquered his agitation, and drew his hand slowly from his bosom, muttering doggedly,

“What a fool! Kill myself here? Disgrace! Well, what of it? My name dishonored—who cares? Where did it come from? Who would feel the shame? Arrest—oh, there lies the danger!”

He lifted a hand distractedly to his forehead, as the last unpleasant idea forced itself on his conviction, and his limbs began to tremble. The gloom of a State’s prison hovered over him. As he stood thus, a voice reached him from the hall; for some of the tables had broken up and their occupants were passing towards the supper-room. A group of two or three persons halted near the recess, and, supposing that he had left the establishment, were discussing his misfortunes.

“The son of a millionaire!” said one. “Nothing of the sort—confidential clerk in the house of N. L. & Co., with a salary which his losses to-night will not more than cover, if the money was really his own.”

“A splendid young rascal, any way,” answered another careless voice, “and sure to come up with a sharp turn if the heads of his firm get hold of this night’s business.”

“Which they will, sooner or later, even if it is not their cash he has been hazarding.”

“Then heaven help him, for the old fellows will have no mercy. They belong to the benevolent evangelical order, and believe in capital punishment, strict justice and all that—never saw the inside of a place like this, and would be shocked to look upon the outer walls. But who is the young fellow? He didn’t plank his money like a novice. His courage ought to have provoked better luck. What is his name? and who are his parents?”

“His name is Hurst—John, Richard, or William, I have no idea which it is; as for his family, if he ever had any I am ignorant of the fact. He lives with an old lady, some aunt, or cousin, across town, whom his salary ought to support, for she has been more than a mother to him, and her means are scanty enough.”

“But he seems well educated.”

“Like a prince. The poor old soul did more than educate him for his present calling; he graduated with firstclass honors, not a year ago.”

“He does not seem more than one-and-twenty, now.”

“Not so old. Late hours, and this sort of thing has dashed all the freshness from his youth; but he is only a boy yet.”

The group passed on, and, strange to say, the last words affected the young man behind the curtains more than any that had gone before.

“Only a boy!” he repeated, bitterly. “I’ll let them see! Fools, is this night’s work that of a boy?”

After this he listened keenly, hoping to discover that the inmates of the hall had been tempted off to the supper-room, when he could withdraw unseen; but, as he bent his head in the stillness, voices reached him, not from the hall, but through the door opening from the recess.

He started, drew himself up with a quick movement, and, slowly bending his head again, listened without a gesture or a breath.

No words were discernible through the thick doors, but the tones of a voice reached him, and the possibility of it belonging to one person inspired him with a desperate joy. Slowly and softly he unclosed the door, and left nothing but a frame covered with green baize between him and the room beyond; a very faint glimmer of light flickered through the baize, but it was impossible to see more than that, though the voices were now distinct.

The young man trembled with impatience. Quick as lightning his intellect grasped the means of safety that lay in that voice, should it prove the one he hoped. He dared not open the door, but softly drawing a small poignard from his bosom, he held the sheath in his mouth, as if to prevent his breath escaping with the slightest sound, and cut a small slit in the baize, through which it was possible to see all that passed in the chamber beyond.

An exclamation almost escaped him, for there, at a table, earnestly at play, sat the respectable head of his firm, the man in whose power his destiny was placed. For half an hour he crouched in that recess, watching the gray-haired gamblers at their midnight work; every word that fell from their lips was treasured—every gesture recorded in his memory. At last the party broke up, and the four men prepared to depart after appointing a like meeting two nights from that, in which the sufferers were to claim revenge for their losses.

The party disappeared through some private door, which did not lead to the hall, and thus young Hurst obtained a secret of the establishment, which he felt sure of making available.

Now he was really excited; despair had made him sullen, but the hope born of this discovery, which promised both safety and revenge, brought a sparkling light to his eyes and changed his entire face. He waited a while, resolving this new state of things over in his mind, and at length, smiling with satisfaction, parted the curtains and stepped into the hall again.

As he had conjectured, most of the visitors were in the supper-room, and with his usual sauntering composure he turned that way.

“Give me wine,” he said, reaching forth a glass; “I wish to drink a toast to a young lady who persecutes me with unpleasant attentions, especially to-night.”

A gentleman filled his glass, saying carelessly to those around him—

“Be quiet, will you, while Hurst toasts his lady-love?”

“Oh, ha! Hurst back again! pluck in that,” cried half a dozen voices. “Now for the lady.”

Hurst held up his glass to the light, smiling with supercilious foppery on the wine, as one might be expected to smile who could utter a lady’s name in such company.

“Come—come.”

“I drink,” he said, lifting his glass with a mischievous twinkle of the eye, “to Miss Fortune, the coquette, and shall be very glad to turn her over to any of you gentlemen at a moment’s warning. One flirtation is enough for me.”

A laugh went round the table, for there was a raciness and dash about the young fellow that made even secondhand wit acceptable. Indeed the whole company were lost in admiration of the wonderful self-possession that marked his behavior. Among all that company he seemed the most free from care or self-reproach.

“The boy will shoot himself before morning,” whispered one of the men who had made his losses a subject of conversation near the recess. “This is recklessness—not philosophy.”

“I think not,” was the reply. “See how steady his hand is, how cheerfully his lip curves. I tell you the fellow takes it coolly: an old stager of sixty could not carry off his misfortunes more bravely. Look at him now.”

“A splendid animal, isn’t he? By Jove, if I had that figure, it should command an heiress with any amount of rocks.”

“But that sort of speculation has so many unpleasant incumbrances,” was the reply, “especially in a State where women hold their own property, and divorces are next to impossible; the laws have almost ruined that sort of thing. But if you have finished that bird, let’s follow the youngster. He interests me.”

The two men arose, and followed Hurst down the room; he knew them slightly, and paused as they came up. One was an elderly man, bald, and sleek of face, with a shrewd eye, and gentle manner. The other appeared somewhat under thirty, and prided himself on being not only a man of the world, but a man of the peculiar world assembled in those rooms.

“Do you make an effort to retrieve?” said the elder, pointing to the faro-table.

“Not to-night,” answered Hurst, smiling. “You remember my toast. One does not get rid of a lady-love so easily; besides, I am sleepy. Good-evening, gentlemen.”

With a bow and a slight wave of the hand, Hurst passed on down the room and away, leaving the two gamblers looking at each other, half amused half disdainful.

“He’s a trump!” said the younger.

“Young America!” sneered the elder, in his silky way. “The boys are crowding us out everywhere.”